They would have been there in 2012 when the drought hit. They would have been there in 2017 when Beth got sick. Martin had avoided those payments by buying used equipment and running it longer than it was supposed to last. The 2366 had given him 16 years. It hadn’t been fast. It hadn’t been modern, but it had been paid for.
And in farming, what you don’t owe matters more than what you own. Dennis Kohler still lives in Broken Bow. He’s 71 now. He doesn’t farm anymore. When people ask him about the years he spent running new equipment, he says it was exciting while it lasted. Tom Worth, the farmer who went bankrupt in 2014, still drives truck in Omaha. He’s 66.
He hasn’t been back to Broken Bow since the auction. Greg Yates retired from the dealership in North Platt in 2023. He’s 68. He doesn’t talk about the Broken Bow years. The 2007 KIH7D10 that Greg tried to sell Martin in September 2006 is still running somewhere. It’s changed hands four times.
The current owner bought it in 2021 for $63,000 with 4,200 separator hours. Martin Hesser doesn’t know where it is and he’s never thought to ask. He just knows that on September 7th, 2006, he had 72 hours to decide and he used all of them to say
| « Prev |
News
The Day He Replaced His Father’s Tractor With a Massey Ferguson… The Silence Lasted Years
It was April 14th, 1976, and Thomas Harlland was 32 years old when he drove his father’s tractor off the farm for the last time. He didn’t tell his father where he was going. He left before sunrise while the…
The Day He Chose This Massey Ferguson 1100 It Solved One Problem and Created Another
It was October 14th, 1966, and Earl Hutchkins was 41 years old when he made a deal that would define the rest of his farming life. He stood in the equipment yard of Peterson Massie Ferguson in Warthingington, Minnesota, with…
The Day He Chose This Massey Ferguson… He Didn’t Know What His Son Would Inherit
It was March 14th, 1987, and Robert Henley was 42 years old when he signed the papers at Crawford Massie Ferguson in Elden, Missouri. The dealership smelled like hydraulic fluid and coffee that had been sitting too long. The salesman…
The Day He Chose This Massey Ferguson…The Whole Town Watched Him Fail
On March 14th, 1979, Carl Denton walked into Hoffman Farm Equipment in Warick County, Indiana, and signed his name 23 times. He was 26 years old. The tractor sitting in the showroom behind him was a Massie Ferguson 2745, painted…
The Day He Refused This Massey Ferguson 1100… His Brother Bought It Instead
It was April 14th, 1972, and Ray Hollister was 41 years old when he stood in the gravel lot of the Crenshaw estate auction and decided not to raise his hand. The auctioneer was moving fast through farm equipment that…
The Day He Chose This Massey Ferguson 1155… The Bank Called It the Biggest Mistake in County History
The day he chose this Massie Ferguson 1155, the bank called it the biggest mistake in county history. On March 14th, 1981, a Saturday morning that started at 18° below zero, Dale Richter walked into Homegrren implement in Langden, North…
End of content
No more pages to load
